


The Machinery of Longing

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, Music, Musical Instruments, Pining, Return, Sherlock's Violin, Violins, a man and his instruments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:07:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2056716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How many times can a person return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Machinery of Longing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moranion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moranion/gifts).



> Happy birthday dear [ Moranion, oh person of many talents!](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Moranion)

London: the symphony, bombs going off, synchronized, a series of city-destroying crescendos, tympani with fire. The bow scrapes over the strings and he falls, wakes, longs for home, another explosion.

*****

The strings’ sound’s better than sex, better than the slip of flesh, tip over the threshold of stiction, that hard-on-soft he’s never cared for, but for the music in the background, but for the smoke, but for the after. Now, Victor said once, stroked a finger down his spine, the back of the violin burnished, what do you want.

_To go home. Anywhere but here._

*****

To the bird-heft of his instrument.

Some are carved with skulls; fiddles really, distant cousins. Figured maple, spruce, ebony, rosewood, boxwood. Rib and belly and fingerboard. His bow’s light in his hands, terpines (beeswax, silver, iron, gold)shining in his nostrils; like no other, the weight of this wood, this signature, the varnish gleaming faint russet, a faithful companion remembered.

Its body began in Prague, ended in London, cradled and coffined in his younger hands. It wasn’t as difficult as he’d thought, deducing an instrument, where it had been. 

_Come home._

*****

A spider’s web, intricate, quick, dramatic, _magnum opus_.

Moriarty has three movements, closes with a rondo.

_Ah, Sherlock, dull boy, you can never go home again; what were you thinking._

What _were_ you.

He’s been writing, furiously, these last days, in parts, in pieces, picking up to play and gaze, deducing and setting down again, while London, grey gallery, stands by.

Not to be seduced but figured, won.

*****

The Woman could not be played; her fingers stroked, plucked, even his hair, once, bloody tips tangled in the soft fibres of charcoal, like hair sketched on paper, _are you awake;let’s eat_. Taut as horsehair, the arm-tendons; in his drug-dream there were stars, texts, strings and voices. John’s name, his rough mouth, his worried hands.

Couldn’t be played, naked, until she could. _Look at us both._

Voices, low, D minor, impossible to chase out of mind. An ache to be written, mourning, ambivalent, not quite a requiem. For the living.

**_*_ **

John Watson, he saw at once, is a conductor; light in the eyes, perfect timing, a lift like no other, both arms at the ready. Follow, woodwinds and strings, follow, and not a false, well, never false; you won’t stop, will you John, until you find me, and I won’t let that happen (a round he’s heard, canon on canon til it rounds on itself, stops, eats its own like a fresh note, goes backwards from end to clef, splits, begins.)

For that reason: die more than once. Fermata. For that reason: live.

Slash across the stave these notes: _I promise, I promise_.

*****

Mary is a waltz, triple time the minute he sees her. Heart too large for body. Broken scroll of a smile, lifts and turns and lifts again. Built from a skeleton and signed on the inside. Spinning, what to say, what to see but the true, the false, the sweet-bitter tonic of this, his new life.

He lifts it to his shoulder, plays.

**_*_ **

The day after the wedding, Diogenes: He sat, read a story about a stolen Stradivarius that no-one asked him to find. Mourned.

Lost all over again, instrumentless, crimeless…

What do you want, the city whispers.

_To not be so lonely._

*****

Mycroft set his violin in his hands, said, I told you not to get involved.

He did.

*****

He’s been shot, cut, beaten; he’s fallen, killed, shammed, hidden, fired a weapon, nearly exploded.

Stands playing London back to himself, composing what he's he’s lost--heart, mind, and you, compass, conductor, partner, friend.

How many times can a person return.

*****

Baker Street at night, all bridge and body. Hands working, stroking, synapses firing. Inside the instrument a crime scene, waiting to be worked out of its hollow, its shadow, dissected and set to notes on the air, open-windowed; mind sharp, bow rosined over, the chemical makeup of all apparent…

It’s a mystery, unaccompanied; a sonata.

Over the city the last light lingers on the bridges, tunnels thrumming the pulse that will take you to the heart again, let you burst out alive, grand and orchestral, home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> On the key of D minor: "Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood."~ Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806)
> 
> “You must use the body - its curves,  
> its hollows, the spring of the sound, which  
> brings back what is absent, what has  
> been and is now gone, fading.” –Sheila Black, “Violin”; title from the same poem.


End file.
